Monday, May 07, 2007

I've been thinking about creating another card game that plays like an RPG but uses a standard deck of cards. Obviously it'll have to use come creative interpretation, but I think it's possible. At first I was thinking it would turn out like an SMS game I was working on with a rock-scissors-paper type army listing, but recently I've been looking at a more involved one with scenarios and individual battles.

The current thinking is to have hearts represent current life points, clubs to represent damage, spades to represent shields or armour and diamonds for treasure. There would be an assortment of monster definitions which had a combination of cards to give an approximate strength, so a lightweight critter could possibly have 2,3,5 of clubs, 1,2 of spades, a 2 &3 of hearts and a treasure chest of 1,2,3. Hearts start on the table as life points, clubs and spades are combined into a deck and are drawn and played as the main part of the game, and one card from the treasure chest is randomly chosen if the monster is defeated. The treasure can then be converted into a card of equivalent cost in either hearts, spades or clubs to advance the character.

Last night I had a dream of a different type of game that played like a How to host a murder mystery crossed with liar, liar . Players are randomly dealt a card which sets their "character". Players then mingle and chat in character to determine who is the killer (the person with the highest card). It was more of a theatrical event in my dream which probably wouldn't play that way, so I'll leave it as that.